


in the middle before i knew i had begun

by shantealeaves



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Dancing, Holding Hands, Letters, M/M, Regency, the eroticism of the bare wrist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:42:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26309527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shantealeaves/pseuds/shantealeaves
Summary: “Oh, my sincerest apologies,” the man said once he was by Akira’s side, his voice smooth and his smirk devilish. “I was just about to ask if you would honor me with this next dance, but it would seem you just sat down for a rest, and I certainly would not wish to push you beyond your limits.” The challenging gleam in his eye as he gave Akira a practiced, perfect smile roused something competitive in him.“Not at all,” Akira said smoothly, standing again. “I had simply exhausted nearly every possible dance partner in the room, and I was lamenting being forced to either sit out this dance or repeat a partner. I should thank you for saving me from the indignity of either.”(Of masquerade balls, lost gloves, and letters; a Regency AU. Written for the 21+ akeshuake server minibang.)
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 22
Kudos: 252
Collections: 21 plus akeshuake server events





	in the middle before i knew i had begun

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the 21+ akeshuake server minibang event. A million thanks to [rabbit](https://twitter.com/undead_rabbit) for the very last minute beta-read of this very last minute fic; a million thanks each to [stephanie](https://twitter.com/wafumayo), [sora](https://twitter.com/reveriesky), [cruellae,](https://twitter.com/antithesiscrow?s=09) and many others for listening to me absolutely bitch my way through this entire piece.

“Everything hurts,” Ryuji moaned, throwing himself onto a plush chair on the periphery of the Okumuras’ ballroom.

“Ryuji, you cannot have taken more than three dances already,” Akira said, taking another glass of wine as a server came by.

“Alright, but have you seen how that Lady Suzui dances? She’s relentless!”

“Don’t let Lady Ann hear you saying that, unless you wish to know the true meaning of everything hurting.”

Much as he enjoyed talking to his friend, Akira was restless, already searching for his next dance partner. He had thus far managed to dance each of the night's half-dozen songs thus far with a new partner, and he dreaded the thought of repeating a partner just as much as he dreaded the thought of not dancing at all. Better to stay in motion, to keep himself occupied with a new person to meet, a new face to charm—after all, that was the joy of these balls.

“And how about you, Akira?” Makoto said, half-engaged in the conversation and half keeping an eye on Lady Haru, the ever-watchful lady-in-waiting so attentive to her ladyship’s needs.

“Respect the mask, Makoto,” is all Akira said. “Tonight, there is no Akira—only Joker.”

She just barely restrained a roll of her eyes; maintaining utmost solemnity of face was a skill Makoto had long mastered while working amongst the rich and ridiculous. “Of course. Joker. Have you danced with anyone who caught your eye?”

“Caught my eye? Most certainly, or I would not have danced with them. First, I believe, was Madame Kawakami, ever the pleasure to catch up with; then Mishima, who, you can well imagine, rather forced my eye onto himself rather than letting it be caught by any natural means; next was Eiko—”

“Caught your eye as a marriage prospect, Joker,” Makoto broke in, her stern attention now fully on Akira. “Is there anyone here you’re hoping to court for marriage?”

“Hah! The day I announce that I am settling down to marry is the day you should stab me through with this dagger, for then you will know I’ve truly lost myself.”

Before she could ask any further questions, Akira grabbed the hand of a flushing girl just making her way off the dance floor, saying that he simply could not keep his eyes off of her and that he begged her to grant him the honor of the next dance.

As he lost himself to the routine steps and routine small talk, Akira Kurusu pondered how he was in the prime of his life, in his element, and how meaningless it all was.

He was lucky, he knew—lucky that Sojiro Sakura expected nothing from him, that he had somehow found himself in the most fortunate position of no longer having an expectation to carry on a family line. It left him in the perfect spot to do what he wanted most: stay entertained, and stay out of trouble.

And so, he danced, taking every dance with someone new and practicing putting on mask after mask. Lady Ann Takamaki so loved her masquerade balls—she had a heart of gold, befriending royalty and servants alike and inviting all to her balls, a true romantic in letting them all mingle under mask and costume—and so he was here, a gentleman thief stealing hearts but never keeping them.

If he was to continue his endless dancing and charming, however, he needed another drink, quickly. And so, the moment one song ended and before the next could begin, he dashed over to the periphery of the room to acquire a new drink—but he found, horrifyingly, that his reflexes had dulled more than he realized. Just as he grabbed a new glass of wine, his traitorous momentum sent him bumping straight into someone who was standing alone in the corner of the room, causing him to spill his drink.

The person was quick to react, pulling himself back to avoid getting wine quite all over his entire costume—but in his haste to push himself away from the offending vessel, he exposed his gloved hand to its downpour, leaving him with one soaked leather glove.

Akira felt his heart begin to race in nervousness and terror. The man was slowly, enragedly turning to look at Akira, all the while peeling the dripping-wet glove off his hand and examining it with utter disgust. That disgust might soon turn straight towards Akira, might soon fuel fury, fuel anger, fuel vengeance...

His moment of frozen fear did not last long; instead, Akira scrambled into action, taking the soaked glove out of the man’s hand and using his own overcoat to blot the liquid from it, drying its surface before the wine could permeate the leather.

Akira worked quietly, intently—the patch of his long coat that he was using as a towel was getting quite damp and sticky now, but that hardly mattered, just as long as he could get it dry enough, clean enough.

When he finally chanced a guilty, hesitant glance up, the man in front of him met his gaze with a stony glare, and drawled, sardonically, “My poor, poor glove.”

Akira felt his eyes go ever so slightly wider, his heartbeat audible in his ears, waiting to hear what the man would say, what he was going to do to him.

“Drenching it in wine, I could stand—for at least this wine is high quality, coming as it did from the Okumuras’ cellars. No, the wine, my glove could handle—but here it is, touching your cheaply-constructed, most disgusting garment, and I am sure it has never been treated so boorishly.”

“I—” Akira stilled from drying the glove on his overcoat, and though he was not sure what to say, he could not help but laugh. It was not out of relief—the man seemed well and truly upset—but his words were utterly shocking and utterly hilarious. _He minds not the wine soaking his glove, but my drying it?_ Surely, he must be speaking in jest?

The scowl the man in the black mask gave him told Akira that he was not, in fact, speaking in jest. Yet all the while his scowl was largely annoyed and mostly betrayed an uncertainty in how to handle himself—hardly the sort of murderous, revenge-seeking anger that Akira had feared—and as he took in the man’s continuously hunched-in posture, Akira felt reassured once more.

If this man did not immediately wish to ruin Akira’s life, then Akira felt suddenly certain in how to handle him. This sort of man—standing against the wall at a ball, likely unskilled at dancing and unskilled at conversation, rich enough to still assume that he should be granted dances and conversation nevertheless, feigning cool anger and indifference as the reasons for his lack of engagement rather than admitting to his incompetence and unpersonable nature.

Akira knew just what to make of this sort of man.

So, when he had finished rubbing the glove until it was mostly dry, Akira extended it back towards the man in the black mask. The man scowled and reached out, brusquely, to take it—and as he did so, Akira pulled that ungloved hand towards him and, with a flourish, bent down to kiss it.

“My name is Joker, and it is such a pleasure to meet you,” he said, glancing up at the man with a devilish smile.

Just as expected the man froze, flustered, and from what very little Akira could see of the man’s face around his largely-obscuring mask, his cheeks visibly flushed.

Akira knew what the next step in this little dance was supposed to be—the man would stammer his own name, maintaining his cool facade to hide his secret elation at finally getting the attention he had so desired.

It was a surprise, then, to see the farthest thing from a facade erupt on the man’s face—for following his flush was a huff, a dark scowl, and a deep, genuine look of disgust.

He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his own hand, as if the very touch of Akira’s lips had stained them with something worse than wine, before sliding his glove back on. “Joker, you say,” he muttered. Looking Akira up and down with that same look of disgust on his face, he said, “You think yourself some sort of trickster, a gentleman thief, I presume?”

Finally, crossing his arms, the man's disgust turned into a smirk. “No, I think rather than the ‘Joker,’ I should rather call you ‘the Fool.’ For you embarrass yourself the longer you stand here in that utterly abhorrent costume—and yet you somehow seem to have others entranced with your little performance, and even more unfortunately, you seem to have fooled yourself, confident that you are, in fact, some sort of suave trickster. No, ‘Joker’ is far too alluring a name for you; only ‘Fool’ will do.”

“Since you seem to be quite the expert in appellations, I pray you will tell me your own, good sir.”

The man looked back at him strangely for a bit, his expression utterly illegible behind his mask, before he finally said, “You may call me Crow.”

The smirk just visible under the bottom edge of his mask had morphed into a self-assured smile, and Akira could not help but think that the cocky confidence suited him.

Akira looked him over, having focused so intently on the stained glove and the obfuscating mask before. The man’s costume was a lavish one, black with blue detailing and framed all over with feathers, black and blue, around the collar and down the edges. As luxurious as the details clearly were from up close, taken altogether, the effect was somewhat ominous, almost villainous.

“Well, Crow, I do so apologize for my disruption—for it seems you were having the most joyous of times before I rudely interrupted.” Without the fear—or, at the very least, with far less fear—of retaliation from the man before him, Akira found himself relaxing just a bit. He took what remained of the glass of wine—all that had not spilled onto Crow’s glove—and slowly sipped it. “After all, there is nothing more enjoyable than spending one’s time at a ball standing in the shadows and engaging absolutely no one.”

“If your intention is to mock me, Fool, I assure you it can have no effect, for making myself appear boring and unapproachable is rather the point. As a matter of fact, this ball is the last place I wish to be, so if I must be here, avoiding social engagement seems the best possible course of action.”

He spoke with an honesty that surprised Akira enough to embolden him. “If you so despise being here, then why come at all?”

Crow seemed to ponder for a second, looking down at his hands—and then, as if drawing inspiration from them, his sharp-edged smile returned. “Why,” he said, “to have wine spilled on me by a Fool, of course.”

The evasion did not go unnoticed, but Akira chose to play along. “Those gloves are quite the fixation of yours. If I may speak plainly, I hardly see anything special in them—they are but an ordinary, rather plain pair of black gloves.”

“You would think so, wouldn’t you, Fool?” Crow said with a sneer. “With those red abominations upon your own hands, I doubt you could tell the difference between a fine calfskin and cheap, disposable linen. But I assure you, for anyone with half a mind towards quality and care rather than price and gaudiness, a mere touch of the material would reveal a world of difference. Moreover, if you simply examine the inner cuff—” at this Crow upturned the cuff of the glove, revealing its inverse and the smooth skin of his wrist underneath— “you would notice the lining, and might identify the rare, pale silk it consists of, if you had any sort of eye towards fine materials. And finally, any imbecile with an eye for detail would note the blood-red embroidery here—” he revealed yet more of his wrist, slender and delicate, as he showed more of the glove’s lining to reveal embroidery around the inner cuff coming together at the base of the thumb into a shape that evoked a ship—“and could see an insignia meaningful to anyone of importance.”

As he pulled the glove back down, Akira jolted at the realization that he had been staring at the man’s wrist for quite some time, but recovered himself quickly.

“But all of that observation,” the man said, his smile biting and cruel, “would only be available to one with any wits at all.”

“Alright,” Akira said, “so you came here tonight both to have wine spilled on your glove and to lecture innocent bystanders on the quality of said spoiled garment. Yet there must be some further reason, if you so despise being here.”

Crow turned away from Akira, sighing harshly. “It is a matter,” he said stiffly, “of obligation. Not something I would expect anyone as frivolous and carefree as yourself to understand.”

“Surely,” Akira prodded, “you cannot be fulfilling this _obligation_ of yours by standing in the corner, brooding, without talking to a soul.”

Crow glared harshly back at Akira, and with a bite in his tone, said, “As expected, you simply cannot understand.”

An uncomfortable silence arose, enough time for Akira to suspect he had spent enough time being insulted and intruding on Crow’s brooding long enough. As Crow simply fiddled angrily with the cuff of his glove, Akira turned to look around the room, seeking a partner for the next dance.

Having spotted someone, he opened his mouth to bid Crow adieu—and at that very moment, Crow himself, hastily and firmly, said, “Tell me why you are here, Fool, if my response is so inadequate.”

“Why, it’s Lady Ann’s homecoming. She has been overseas so long; I would not miss this for the world.” Akira then paused, attention fully turned back to Crow, before continuing, “But that is hardly to say that I am here, as you say, out of _obligation._ Lady Ann and Lady Haru have plenty to do for the night—if my goal was simply to establish my presence, I could very well have greeted them in the first few minutes of this ball and then been on my way, and they likely would not have noticed my subsequent absence, occupied as they are.

“No,” he continued, “I am here for far grander reasons.” He gave a flourish of his hand and a calculated twirl to send his overcoat flaring out dramatically around him, as he said, “I am here to live life to its very fullest.”

“Oh, good lord,” Crow mumbled, putting a hand to his face in utter despair. Yet Akira could see the slight smile at his dramatics, embarrassed a smile as it was, so Akira, grinning widely, continued on.

“For what more is there to life than dancing, drinking, and conversing?” he said, adopting a bombastic tone that drew more than a few glances their way. “A ball is one thing, but a _masquerade_ ball? Where, hiding behind a mask, one can pretend to be anyone and no one—whether that is a dashing gentleman thief or, ah, an unfortunate avian. The precise opposite of obligation, I should say—to live free of burden, of expectation. That is why I am here.”

Crow’s smile at Akira’s antics had faded slightly as he talked, and now he looked a touch more serious, his hand on his chin. “I wonder,” he said, “what living ‘unburdened by obligation’ actually means to you. For is it not the case that, if one is to live _free_ from obligation, then there must, in the first place, be an obligation that one is shafting?”

“If you are trying to ever-so-slyly inquire into my title or my responsibilities, Crow, you will not be successful, for to answer that would be to ruin the surprise of the masquerade—”

“Ah, but my dear Fool, you have already ruined any such surprise,” Crow replied, his sharp and proud smile returned. “You gave yourself away by how you dance—when you are not running into strangers and spilling wine on their most precious garments, of course—with a skill that betrays formal training. And though your tongue has been loosened by enough wine to render you sluggish in each of our verbal spars, even I cannot deny that you manage to keep up with me to duel at all. All this, of course, suggests you are educated, quite thoroughly, by a most prestigious family.”

Crow articulated his words with whole-body gestures and a broad—if cruel—smile breaking across his face. Truly, for the first time all night, he seemed to be having fun, and it left Akira slightly nauseated, certain he was failing to contain a dawning look of horror.

“And yet,” he continued, ignorant of—or, more likely, because of—Akira’s discomfort, “here you are, dressed in these horrible garments and pretending to be a gentleman thief, dancing with anyone and everyone you come across. With hardly a thought to whom you must and mustn’t interact with, whom you should be courting for marriage, whose daughters you should entertain to obtain what business deal. Truly, none of this is of any concern to you tonight—your concern is only with finding a new partner before the next dance begins, and for all you care the person behind that mask could be the gardener, invited to this ball in a fit of sentimentality on Lady Ann’s part.”

Akira quietly mumbled, “Ryuji is a fine man,” but Crow plowed on over him.

“Where does this leave us? It is clear that you come from a family of some significant standing, and yet you care not at all about this, living as if you are ignorant of everything expected of you. You act as if you believe this charade of the ‘masquerade,’ as if the masks we wear are not flimsy constructions that can never hide our true selves—you act as if you truly believe it. Truly, you intrigue me—and truly, you live up to your name, my Fool.”

Without letting Akira get even a word of response in, Crow laughed harshly, then walked straight off and out of the ballroom, leaving Akira stunned for a few moments.

As he finally recovered himself, he could not help but scoff, thoroughly glad to see the repulsive Crow leaving and the most repugnant conversation of the evening finally over.

With a huff, he hastily found a partner for the next dance, trying to lose himself in the nothingness of jaunty dance and conversation. Yet his mind kept wandering back to his conversation with Crow, filling him with sparks of rage. He found himself thinking of all the rebuttals he was too slow to make to put Crow in his proper place; so, too, did he find himself thinking of jokes and witticisms he could have used to get that scoff-laugh out of him. Replaying the conversation in his mind, he could not help but repeat to himself, over and over, how vile a man that was, how truly unfortunate that such a misanthropic, miserable creature existed, and how glad he was to have finally moved on—and all the while, as he danced with the loveliest and pleasantest of partners, he found himself looking back towards the edges of the room, trying to spot the man in the black mask out of the corner of his eye.

When everyone in the hall seemed to pause and turn their attention towards the center of the room, however, Akira could not help but wrest his attention from the sidelines and follow suit to find the source of the commotion.

It was Lady Ann, dancing with a man in a white outfit and long red mask, the two of them among the best dancers Akira had ever seen, moving together as a captivating, beautiful unit. The dance was hardly supposed to be a solo for them, but the lines quickly dissolved as heads turned toward them, and the two, both clearly accustomed to the spotlight, turned a typical line dance into something all their own.

When the mesmerizing dance finally ended, the man in the red mask bowed, kissed Lady Ann’s hand reverently, and then hastily left her side. As he left her, a thoroughly unobtrusive man in a dark suit came to his side, murmured something in his ear, pointed to draw the man’s attention to someone in particular, and then left his side, blending into the crowd once more.

The man in the red mask looked around the room ever so quickly, before heading in the direction that the other man had pointed, finding a woman there who seemed expectant of his approaching her to dance. 

Those murmurs shifted just as quickly when their dance ended, the man gave a bow and kissed her hand reverently, and then moved across the room, followed by an unobtrusive man following him and occasionally saying something in his ear to tell him whom to accost.

Akira’s own dancing suffered tremendously as he watched the red-masked man with sharp attention. Between each dance, after which the red-masked man would bow deeply before taking off as quickly as possible, that man in the dark suit appeared back by his side, pointing the man to his next target.

Akira found himself inexplicably drawn to the man, following his obnoxious beaked mask around the room; something about how mechanically he was approaching the ball, treating each partner with the appropriate amount of dedication and passion before moving on to the next down the list, struck Akira as both extremely humorous and terribly sad.

When the next dance ended, Akira saw the dark-suited man point to a woman who was close to Akira himself—and so, naturally, Akira made his way to that woman before red-mask could, channeled all the charm he possessed, and asked her to dance.

Looking back at red-mask and dark-suit as he lead the lady to the dance floor, he saw a look of wide-eyed surprise on the red-masked man’s face, eyes wide as he watched Akira lead the woman to the dance floor, before, slowly, a small smirk bloomed on his face. Akira could not help but return it with a victorious smile of his own, before turning his attention to the woman he had stolen.

A few more dances passed in the same way—the dark suited man would point out a target, and Akira would try to reach that target before they could. It was a silly competition, and an utterly meaningless one given that Akira had no idea who these people he was dancing with were—but with every victory, he would see, as he lead his stolen partner to the dance floor, a gleam of something surprised and amused and competitively gleeful in the red-masked man’s expression, so clear even beneath the mask, and it filled Akira’s heart with sparks of something more lively than any dance the whole evening ever did.

Much as he enjoyed their little game, though, even Akira could not handle eight consecutive dances without rest, or at least without a glass of wine. Just as he stepped to the periphery of the room to cool off, however, that bright scarlet mask caught his eye again—and so he saw the masked man dismissing his dark-suited companion, and then making his way towards Akira. 

“Oh, my sincerest apologies,” the man said once he was by Akira’s side, his voice smooth and his smirk devilish. “I was just about to ask if you would honor me with this next dance, but it would seem you just sat down for a rest, and I certainly would not wish to push you beyond your _limits.”_ The challenging gleam in his eye as he gave Akira a practiced, perfect smile roused something competitive in him.

“Not at all,” he said smoothly, standing again. “I had simply exhausted nearly every possible dance partner in the room, and I was lamenting being forced to either sit out this dance or repeat a partner. I should thank you for saving me from the indignity of either.”

The man gave a pleased, tinkling laugh, and offered his hand. Akira took it, red glove in black as they made their way back into the throng of dancers.

Akira knew he hardly made as elegant a dance partner as Lady Ann, but what he lacked in polish and skill, he made up for with innate grace and a sense of flourish; and every time he missed a step of the dance, whether unintentionally or in an attempt to add something unique, he earned another of those tinkling, pleased laughs from the red-masked man.

The song was a quick, energetic one, but enough of the dance kept them close enough to talk, and Akira hardly wished to pass up the chance to talk to this intriguing man.

“Though you never asked my name, I am more than happy to provide it—you may call me Joker, gentleman thief extraordinaire.”

“Ever-ready to steal hearts and dance partners, I see,” the red-masked man said with a laugh.

“And what shall I call the man giving me the honor of this dance?”

The man almost stumbled over a step, before recovering himself and looking at Akira quizzically. “You...don’t know who I am?”

“Certainly not, sir—and how could I, with that mask upon your face?”

The man gave Akira a truly unreadable look, before finally smiling a bit flimsily and saying, “Yes, well. You may call me...the Prince.”

Akira’s eyebrows raised. “You are not truly a prince, I hope, or else I would fear for my life after the little stunts I pulled.”

The Prince’s lips quirked into a smile as he said, “What happened to the joy and mystery of the masquerade? Well, I shall give you this much: no, I am not truly a prince.”

“Good—then I shall abandon all shame entirely and continue to surprise you with my wit and tricks and dashing thievery.”

“I do so love surprises,” the Prince said, and the look he gave Akira from under his mask was so sly and playful that Akira was glad the next steps of the dance turned them away from each other, so that he could bring under control his warming face that he was sure had turned a few shades pinker.

They continued talking, exchanging jabs and witticisms, banter that was fun and perhaps bordering on the flirtatious—but Akira had to remind himself that it was just that: banter. Akira had challenged him in a little game, and the Prince had taken up the challenge; but just how with every previous partner, the prince had acted charming, bold, and jovial before turning away and retreating, stone-faced, as fast as he could. Akira was just another such partner to him, much as he wanted to pretend otherwise, so as the song drew to its end, Akira donned his most assured smile and took a bow, preparing for the Prince to thank him for the dance, turn around, exhale in relief, and find another partner to charm as thoroughly as he had charmed Akira.

Instead, Akira felt a tug on his hands as the Prince held onto them, refusing to relinquish them.

When Akira turned back to the Prince, it was to see him not quite meeting Akira’s gaze, cheeks the slightest bit flushed, before he finally, quietly, asked, “Might I have the next dance?”

Suddenly, all Akira felt was the racing of his pulse, all he heard was its hammering in his ears as he faced the Prince. It felt as if he had been following a script only for it to be ripped out of his hands, leaving him in the middle of an empty stage in front of a silent, waiting audience.

This wasn’t the next step. The Prince was supposed to take his leave and forget about Akira, but now—

Akira nodded mutely, taking up his position across from the Prince once more.

The next song began, a much slower and more pensive melody. Where they had previously been talking nearly nonstop, Akira found that he no longer knew what to say, and in the silence they simply stared at each other, moving around each other in perfect, quiet synchrony.

After a full minute of dancing and staring in silence, the Prince finally broke it, saying—in a hushed, somber voice— “Surely, you were pretending not to know who I am when I asked earlier.”

“Do you take yourself to be such a celebrity that others should recognize you even with a mask to obscure your identity?”

The Prince gave a small, bitter laugh—and that was something Akira had not yet seen from this man. He had seen perfect, charming smiles and playful smirks, all matching his regal outfit. His bitterness was jarring and unusual; somehow, the truth of it only drew Akira in more.

“Mask or no,” the Prince said carefully, “every other person I have danced with is aware of exactly who I am. They expected me to be here, they knew what costume I would wear, they can recognize my eyes and my hair. Forgive me, then, for doubting you—but none of them should ever want to dance with me, not just once but _twice,_ if they did not know who I was and expect something to come of the dance, whether that be favor, recognition, or partnership. I would not expect you to be different.”

“My Prince, I will say it once more, as honestly as I stated it the first time—I do _not_ know who you are. And unless you wish to tell me, I do not wish to know.”

“Why?” The Prince looked at him doubtfully, untrusting—and yet, beneath it all, hopeful.

“Because it seems you are rather surprised by the possibility to enjoy just two dances with someone who knows not who you are or who your father is. You are surprised that perhaps we could enjoy ourselves for these two dances as nothing more and nothing less than a fairytale prince and a mysterious gentleman thief—and as you said, you love surprises.”

For a few long moments more, the Prince said nothing, simply watching Akira dance in silence. Finally, he laughed—quietly, dryly, but a true laugh. “How impossibly naive—to imagine ever being anything more or anything less than the person everyone knows me to be. And yet, here, you surprise me again. I believe you and accept your offer—on the condition that you grant me just one more dance, Joker.”

Just as Akira was going to accept, the man in the dark suit who had been accompanying the Prince earlier reappeared by his side. Without even looking at Akira, and with the most displeased of sneers, he said, “Your father is asking for you.”

The Prince’s face suddenly went slack from where it had moments before been smiling, sliding back into a mask as unreasonable and impenetrable as the red mask upon his face. He turned back to Akira, bowed slightly, and said, “Please excuse me,” before following the man.

 _Please excuse me—_ that, Akira thought to himself, is what one would say when momentarily excising oneself; so he stood where he was, foolishly and obstructively, waiting for the Prince’s return.

Only when he saw the barest flash of a white jacket and white pants out the window did he realize how wrong he was, and too late—for the Prince had left without any sort of farewell.

Akira pushed his way out of the ballroom inelegantly, down a long hallway and out a side door, where he could see the Prince, much too far away for him to shout, somberly entering a carriage and departing.

But he also saw something else: a small shadow illuminated by lamplight purely by chance, something fluttering down just as the carriage door closed behind the Prince. Akira walked up to where the carriage had been resting a minute earlier to find a glove resting on the ground.

He walked back to the estate slowly, unable to contain his smile. It was only later, looking at the glove under the bright chandelier light, that realization dawned and he found himself entangled in a rather queer mystery, indeed.

  


* * *

  


_To the most respectable Lord Goro Akechi,_

_I hope this letter finds you in the best of health, save for what must by now be a very chilled left hand._

_My name is Akira Kurusu. “Perhaps you will remember me as Joker,” my pen aches to write—but oh, my hand knows better. After all, you yourself gave me such a wonderful alias that seemed to amuse you greatly, and as such, I feel I ought use it in my reintroduction: it is I, the man you christened “The Fool.”_

_I will speak frankly, Lord Akechi, when I say that none of this is unfolding quite how I would have hoped. To understand exactly what I hoped requires the sort of vivid imagination that only comes from reading an entire shelf of romance novels in Lady Ann’s library, and as I presume you have not had the pleasure of doing so, I will paint the scene for you:_

_Picture, if you please, the Okumura estate’s ballroom at the masquerade honoring Lady Ann’s homecoming. I was costumed as a dashing gentleman thief—only to have my own heart stolen instead! For a handsome, mashed man who called himself the Prince had swept me up into dance, putting out of my mind the dreadful company of that dastardly man who had called himself the Crow. The Prince took his leave without an adieu, but he left one thing behind—a singular black glove that fell to the ground as he made his hasty retreat._

_Immediately, of course, a brilliant plan occurred to me: I would knock on every door in this country, asking each man I found to try on the glove until the perfect hand slipped in, revealing the red-beaked man of my memory._

_I divulged the details of this plan to Ryuji Sakamoto, the gardener of my estate and my very best friend. Just as we were discussing how, precisely, we would judge the glove’s perfect fit, Lady Haru herself stepped in to say that if it was the identity of that brown-haired man in princely attire with whom she heard I had danced with twice, she could provide that easily: he was Lord Goro Akechi, son of Duke Masayoshi Shido._

_Sweet, sharp Lady Haru, a woman whose keen observation I have long admired—yet in that moment, how I wished her more oblivious!—for with the knowledge she shared came the destruction of my masked man’s mystique._

_But the worst, I regret to share, was yet to come, because in the very next moment I did something I may well regret for the rest of my life: I took a closer look at the glove._

_When I first picked it up, it seemed to me a perfectly ordinary leather glove. As I looked closer, however, horror dawned upon me as I took in details that I longed to ignore but could not for how they had been impressed upon me by a rude, demanding man just hours earlier. The finest of calfskin leather, the pale silk lining, the blood-red embroidery, all as the vulgar braggart had shown me. There was little room for doubt, yet still I hoped that I was wrong—until I held the glove to the light and found the edges of the wine stain that I myself had put there earlier in the night._

_My hopes of reuniting with the polite, pleasant Prince of my dreams were crushed, replaced with reality: that I was charged with returning the glove of a horribly vulgar misanthrope who, when left to his own devices, refused all dancing and chose to spend his time berating me on the ugliness of my costume._

_Truly, Lord Akechi, I wonder whether the vulgar man who so thoroughly insulted me, the glove’s current safekeeper, even deserves to get this precious garment back. My left hand does, truth be told, frequently get colder than my right, and though my fingers are a touch longer than yours, I have found that the finest of calfskin and rarest of silk lining does, indeed, keep them quite toasty._

_That said, Lord Akechi, you have something that I desperately want; so, I propose a trade. You shall pay me a visit to my estate, and once you are here, I shall reunite you with your precious hostage; in return, you will then provide a thorough explanation as to why in heaven you wore two different costumes and pretended to be two different people at the ball._

_Holding on to your glove until then,_

_Your Fool, Akira Kurusu_

  


* * *

  


The night of the ball, Akira slept fitfully, his dreams full of snippets of conversation with one man—sometimes wearing a red mask, sometimes black. When he woke the next morning, it was with immense frustration towards himself for the fixation. He had merely fallen for the “Prince’s” charming, alluring facade, as he was sure many others had before—but now that he knew the other side of the man, that facade should have cracked completely, leaving nothing of any interest or intrigue.

Yet full of restless intrigue he nevertheless was—so after writing his letter and sending it to the address Haru had given him, he called upon Lady Ann.

She invited him in for tea—which for Lady Ann, meant the consumption of many little sweets and pastries far more than it meant drinking much tea at all. They talked of how fun the previous night’s ball had been and laughed over their mutual friends’ antics—but Lady Ann had always been able to read Akira exceptionally well, and pestered Akira until he finally asked the question he wanted to ask.

“The man you danced with in the middle of the night—Lord Goro Akechi. What do you know about him?”

“Not all that much,” Ann said through a mouth of puffed pastry, powdered sugar all over her mouth. “He is the son of Duke Masayoshi Shido, set to inherit a great fortune and his father’s title. We grew up going to the same sorts of parties, but he has always been a bit closed off.”

“And what do you think of him, Lady Ann?”

“Well, he’s become a much better dancer than the last time we tried,” she said with a giggle. Then her gaze turned mischievous, as she said, “As you well should know, given the two dances you took with him.”

“Surely you were busy, during your own homecoming ball, with matters far more important than counting how many dances I took with whom,” Akira said, shoving a bite of cake into his mouth.

“Yes! But I have ears everywhere, and everyone was talking about it, trying to figure out who that dashingly handsome man dancing with Lord Akechi was!”

“I take it those were not exactly the words they used.”

Ann laughed aloud, saying, “Not quite!” and spraying crumbs everywhere with her exclamation. Akira smiled at her fondly, dusting himself off.

Ann would not let him slip away from the conversation; her expression turned sly as she elbowed Akira’s sides. “Why, Akira, are you taken with him?”

Akira could not help but snort. “Not in the slightest,” he responded. “All the beauty in the world could not excuse what turned out, under several layers of deceit, to be a most repugnant personality.”

“So you do find him attractive?” she asked.

“It hardly matters; he thinks so highly of himself and believes himself so incredibly superior to everyone else in the room, it made even simply dancing with him an exercise in restraint, knowing he was sneering down at me for my inferior clothes and inferior title. Attractive or not, my life will be all the better if I am never forced to have a conversation with such a terrible man again.”

He said this, all the while feeling the weight of the glove buried deep within his coat pocket. He felt it prudent to carry it, in case, perhaps, the man was visiting Lady Ann at the same time he was—it would certainly expedite things, if he could make the exchange then and there, and never have to think of the man again.

As their conversation moved to other topics, though, Akira found himself fiddling with the glove in his pocket, running a finger back and forth over the bumps of embroidery along the smooth silk lining, over and over.

  


* * *

  


_To the most brilliant Mr. Akira Kurusu,_

_How clever you are, having pieced together that little mystery. It was, after all, such a terribly difficult one: how ever could you have possibly deduced that the two men you talked to—two men who had the same hair and eye color that I put absolutely no effort into obscuring; who had the same voice that, even had I wished to, I never could have hidden given how much inane conversation you forced me into; and who never appeared in the room at the same—what prescience it must have taken to reach the shocking conclusion that they were the same person. Truly, I can only imagine how your little party of sycophants praised you for such cleverness._

_I trust you had a great deal of fun telling them all about how Lord Goro Akechi, son of Duke Masayoshi Shido, is secretly a “horribly vulgar man” and “misanthrope.”_

_Did Lady Okumura fall into swoon after learning what a terrible man she’d let into her father’s estate, right under her nose? Oh, do tell me, please; you mustn’t keep all the fun to yourself._

_Your “trade,” I’m afraid, is nothing of the sort, for as generous as you are to offer to return to me my very own property which you desecrated, I have nothing nearly so precious to give in return. You ask for an explanation as to why I wore two different costumes—you ‘desperately want’ one, even!—but that explanation is so trivial that I can provide it for you, in its entirety, within this letter._

_How presumptuous of me, though, to declare the reason to be trivial! I beg your forgiveness for the impertinence of my assumption. After all, for someone like yourself—someone who has had everything handed to him; someone surrounded by a perfect, loving family and perfect, loving friends; someone who can treat a ball not as a battleground for amassing social capital, because he is so pleasantly situated he has no need to think of strategic marriage and connections, and instead can waste the entire evening dancing with anyone and everyone who catches his capricious fancy—yes, for someone like you, I can imagine my reasoning I impossible to comprehend. I will state it as clearly as I can, then:_

_Those who have actually had to work to earn their place in society have certain expectations placed on them, and sometimes, Kurusu, yearn for just a moment’s respite from that judgment._

_Please take a deep breath, Kurusu, for I know this must confound you, putting a furrow into your pretty little brow and sending you to your fainting couch. I can hear, even now, the perplexed thoughts that must be flooding the limited capacity of your mind:_

_Escaping from one’s current situation? How could you possibly imagine needing to do so, in a life that is nothing but charmed!_

_Facing judgment from those around you? Clearly, you have never faced anything of the sort, given the utter shamelessness of your attire and makeup at the ball; or, in the much more likely case that others have judged you, you are simply too dull to have noticed, and live in such a lovely, innocent ignorance._

_You have never had a parent place impossible expectations on you; you have been loved and cherished and utterly spoiled._

_Difficult as it must be to comprehend, I was dressed as I was in my two costumes hoping to spend just a small portion of a single night as someone other than Lord Goro Akechi, with all the expectations and judgments placed upon that man. And I was succeeding tremendously, until you so carelessly threw yourself into my path and spilled your wine on my glove._

_Now that you have your answer, I daresay the terms of your little agreement have been met. I pray you will release your hostage to be reunited with an owner who understands its worth. Given that you now know my name and address, I expect to receive the glove within a fortnight, such that we may both put this matter behind us._

_With the utmost respect and admiration,_

_Lord Goro Akechi_

  


* * *

  


_To the most ruffled Lord Goro Akechi,_

_How ever could I have thought of you as the Prince, when the name ‘Crow’ suits you so well?—for as I read your last letter, all I could imagine was an angry little bird, its feathers all puffed up and ruffled as it mounted a scattered defense._

_You mock me for deigning to think myself clever for figuring out that you were both the man in the black mask and the red, claiming that it should have been so obvious; yet if this were the case, how would you have used that black costume to hide your identity, letting you “spend just a small portion of a single night as someone other than Lord Goro Akechi?” Surely, if someone as imbecilic as me could put together the clues, then the general populous would have found you out, too?_

_As I said—it is amusing, seeing you lash out like a bird caught in some sort of trap. Yet if I may smooth down some of those wild feathers and ease the bird out of its trap:_

_Of course I did not tell Lady Okumura that you donned a secret identity at the ball. It was not my secret to tell, and as you caused no disruption in your black mask attire (my diminished sense of self-worth aside), I saw no reason to share it once I put your two masks together._

_Now then, the most interesting part of your letter: how very much you seem to know about me. Indeed, it was news to me to read that I have “never had a parent place impossible expectations” on me, never “faced judgment from those around” me. I grew up loved and cherished and utterly spoiled? I so wish that you had told me so earlier, so that I might have enjoyed my youth much more than I ever did!_

_You seem to know such a fascinating version of the story of my life, one that I prefer a great deal more than the one I know. That one, in brief, goes like this:_

_Akira Kurusu was the son of the baronets Kurusu, who interacted with their own son hardly once a year, caring only to remind him hat as the oldest son, the weight of their legacy was on their shoulders. He made one small mistake that brought down the ire of a Duke upon him, and rather than let that Duke castigate his family, the baronets Kurusu decided to cast that older son out of the house, pretending he had never been born and leaving him with nothing._

_He found himself taking on a series of odd jobs simply to survive—one of which brought him in contact with the Sakuras. Here, perhaps, your implication that I am undeservingly lucky is true enough: one of his jobs gave him the opportunity to rehabilitate the reclusive Sakura daughter, and as thanks, the Sakuras took him in as one of their own, setting him up far more comfortably than he truly deserved. Yet he was still no one, still had nothing truly of his own._

_I enjoy your version of the story much better! But I hope you understand why, living only with the version I knew, I came to the conclusions I did, the very conclusions that you mocked as naive and clueless at the ball: that one can be both someone and no one at once; that titles are truly not so important, and conventions for things like marriage and propriety even less so, given how easily they can be lost. In fact, from that story I learned that truly freeing oneself from the obligations one feels shackled by, even if it must be by violently falling and losing everything, can be the beginning of true freedom._

_Of course, with your clearly superior knowledge of my history, I stand eager to be corrected. It may well be just as you surmise, that I know absolutely nothing of these matters._

_Should you do me the honor of correcting my erroneous views, I would be more than happy to repay your favor with the return of your glove._

_Ever your Fool,_

_Akira Kurusu_

  


* * *

  


_Kurusu,_

_I apologize for a rather brief letter this time._

_I would first like to ask that you cease calling me ‘Lord Goro Akechi’ at once, and that you simply use ‘Akechi’—not because of any deep feeling of friendship I feel towards you, I assure you, but because it is clear you find titles so meaningless that it feels farcical for you to use mine._

_Your story, I must admit, surprised me. I maintain that you are still hopelessly naive—though you have experienced a great loss, even you admit that you ended up in the most fortunate of positions._

_Your family cutting ties with you could hardly have been pleasant, but there are also far worse things they could have done. I face greater obligations than you could ever have dreamed of, and the punishment for not upholding those obligations would not simply be an erasure from the family. Freedom of the sort you describe would never be a possibility for me._

_Moreover, you use this situation to your advantage—you befriend, as far as I can tell, everyone from Lady Ann Takamaki to your gardener, and hold them in equally strong confidence, having used the full range of your experiences, from baronet to absolutely no one, to do so._

_To be honest, Akira Kurusu, I despise all of this about you. I despise how deftly you have handled your circumstances, the friends you have made, the freedom you seem to have found. And I assure you that while you might have been fortunate enough to land on your feet after such a great fall, others put into your situation would hit the ground in a violent splatter. I despise you for all of this._

_I also wonder if you have read any Hegel. Surely you must have, given your background and the education you must have received; the conversations I have with you, the duality that comes from engaging someone with utterly incorrect viewpoints such as yourself, reminds me strongly of one of his theories. I wonder if you would be able to correctly identify it._

_Do not believe that I have forgotten about the leather hostage you still hold, Kurusu._

_Ever hopefully for the increasingly unlikely return of my glove,_

_Goro Akechi_

  


* * *

  


Over two months, Akira had collected around a dozen letters from Akechi, stacked in a box on his writing table. Each day when the mail was brought in, he found himself anticipating a letter from Akechi, and would inevitably feel a hit of disappointment when he did not receive one. Some intervals between letters were particularly long, and some letters around those times were particularly short; Akira supposed that being the son of a duke likely came with responsibility.

If it did, Akechi never mentioned such responsibilities in his letters. Even when Akira had asked out of curiosity as to what sorts of matters had occupied him for multiple days preventing him from writing, Akechi gave a vague response before jumping back into a discussion of philosophy or books or simply exchanging witty insults.

Curious as he was, Akira could not say he truly minded; it was, he supposed, just as it had been when he was dancing with the Prince those months ago. Akechi suggested, if never outright stated, that Akira was the only person who conversed with Akechi not to take advantage of his position but to discuss mundane matters.

Of course, Akechi could still be a complete and utter ass about some of those matters. When Akira described an outing he took with Ryuji, Akechi felt it necessary to comment on how vulgar it was for him to associate with people like that, how it inevitably lowered his estimation in others’ minds.

He was still absolutely insufferable, truly and deeply convinced of his own righteousness. The condescending, rude, utterly impossible man in the black mask never truly went away.

It was a complicated feeling to reckon with, when Akira realized he felt happy knowing that Akechi showed him the absolute worst parts of himself.

He was lost in thought, mulling over the contents of Akechi’s last letter in his head, when a soft throat-clearing across the table from him brought him back to reality.

He was sitting in Lady Haru’s remarkable garden across from the Lady herself, sipping tea and catching up on their lives—and they had been discussing the ball of two months prior when Akira got lost in his train of thought.

“Speaking of Lady Ann’s ball,” Haru said delicately, after Akira’s attention had been brought back to her and the tea, “I recall that you asked for Lord Akechi’s name after dancing with him that night.”

He heard the hesitance and slight strain in her voice, so he simply said, “Yes, I did.”

“And you have also been exchanging letters with him regularly since then, have you not?”

That struck Akira a little more; he knew the Okumuras were one of the most powerful families in the country, but having that fact thrust into the middle of their friendship was another thing entirely. Still, however the information was acquired, Haru was sharing it with Akira now—she would never do so without a reason, so Akira simply replied, “Yes.”

She took a small composing breath, and then said, “It is certainly not my place to dictate whom you may or may not interact with, Akira, and if at any point I am overstepping too dreadfully, please tell me. As a friend however, I feel obligated to share my complicated feelings about Lord Akechi.”

Akira was no stranger to complicated feelings about Goro Akechi, though he sensed those feelings of Haru’s were far more serious than his own. So, slowly, delicately, patiently—as he knew matters were best handled with Haru—Akira drew those feelings out of her.

“Duke Shido,” she explained, “relied on my father’s money and influence on his path to power, and then threatened my family once his usefulness expired to ensure his silence. I know that my father is hardly innocent here, but nevertheless—he has lived in fear of Duke Shido ever since. That in large part is due to the actions of his son. It became clear that Lord Akechi would do absolutely anything his father asked of him, when…”

She trailed off, then shook her head. “No, I apologize, Akira. I should not get into the realm of conjecture, or let my personal bias enter here. Suffice it to say, Lord Akechi is very much the heir to Duke Shido’s power and title, and I don’t doubt he would do practically anything to secure that power.

Akira was not sure how to feel about that, because he knew Haru was not wrong. Intelligent and questioning as he may be, Akechi had also made it clear that he felt trapped precisely because he would do anything to keep his station. He complained that Akira could never understand the weight of his obligations, that Akira was uniquely lucky for escaping them and finding freedom on the other side—and that was because spoiled, elitist Akechi could not imagine a world where he was not on the top, where he and his father did not rule.

Akira knew that Akechi was not a good person. And yet, he felt a bubbling discomfort hearing Haru’s words.

“I apologize again for any discomfort I am causing, Akira. But if you are pursuing Lord Akechi romantically, it feels imperative for me—”

“Wait, Haru, stop,” Akira said firmly. “I am _not_ ‘pursuing Lord Akechi romantically.’ I have absolutely no interest in doing so.”

Haru’s brow furrowed as she considered for a few moments. “Perhaps you do not believe you are. But sharing two dances of the sort you did, then exchanging letters so regularly as you do—I would hardly be the only one to label this courtship.”

Akira felt like he could laugh deliriously, and could not help the few snorts of disbelief that he let out. “Haru—absolutely not. I _despise_ Akechi. He is the most insufferable person I have ever had the misfortune to engage with; his letters are more insults than normal conversation; and he has made it absolutely, abundantly clear that he looks down upon me tremendously. I apologize for laughing, Haru, but it is utterly hilarious to me to imagine interpreting our relationship in any such way.”

Haru hardly seemed appeased—in fact, she seemed only more agitated, even as she gave Akira a small smile. “Yes, of course, Akira—I trust you,” she said, sounding like she did not trust him at all. “I just beg you, whatever the reason for your correspondence, to be careful.”

Akira swore to take Haru’s words to heart. He would make his loathing of Akechi abundantly clear, so there could be no mistake.

  


* * *

  


_Dear Akechi,_

_Today I chatted with Lady Haru Okumura. She mentioned briefly that she has heard we are exchanging letters, and posed the question of whether we were engaging in courtship. i would like to state clearly, in case it was not abundantly clear, that just as you have stated so many times that you despise me, I despise you. You are the last person on Earth I would ever consider marrying, and I have no doubt you feel the same way about me. It is painful, how humorous Lady Haru’s erroneous belief was..._

__

  


* * *

  


_Dear Akira,_

_Yes, I appreciate you setting that matter straight with Lady Okumura. If she needs further evidence, please show her the glove of mine that you have held captive for two months now; if we were truly in courtship or even friends, I have no doubt a decent man would have returned the glove long since by now, rather than holding on to it for himself…_

  


* * *

  


Akira would not think too much about the fact that clearing up the matter with Akechi, rather than giving the relief he expected, only made him feel more nauseated about the whole situation. Something about the vagueness of Haru’s premonition, combined with Akechi’s readiness to agree with Akira about the meaninglessness of their relationship left him feeling ever-so-slightly off balance.

  


* * *

  


_Dear Akechi,_

_I am glad that we are on the same page. Returning to our discussion of the dialectic from a few letters ago…_

  


* * *

  


_Dear Akechi,_

_It has been nearly a full week since I have heard from you, a far longer interval between letters than ever before. Were you simply that astounded by my newfound mastery of the Hegelian? I admit, it is only after reading that book responding to Hegel that you recommended, that I truly understood—so you need not be intimidated by my intellect…_

  


* * *

  


When Akira found himself in town a few days later, it took him a moment to figure out why, upon seeing a man with brown hair walking down the street, he suddenly felt the draw of recognition.

The brown-haired man was walking down the street stiffly, and the source of the stiffness was clear—the woman hanging off of his arm. She was rather beautiful, and rather happy to be there, talking jovially without a care for the man’s stiffness.

And behind them, a few paces away, was a man with a bald head. He walked proudly, seeming to loom over them. He held himself as if the two in front of him were two pampered dogs he was walking on leashes. They were there for him to show off for the day.

Akira typically would not have looked twice at such a scene—but then he took in the details. The long hair; the brown eyes that he remembered framed by a black mask and then a red; and most damning of all, a pair of black gloves upon his hands, identical to the one Akira had in his possession except far newer, hardly broken in.

Akira had only seen Goro Akechi behind two separate masks, but he was certain he was not mistaken. It was him.

Akechi had not yet spotted him. He wondered whether, once Akechi did spot him, he would recognize him. After all, Akira had not done much to hide himself at the masquerade that night: a simple mask, his hair pushed back a bit more dramatically than usual, and a costume. Yet Akira also knew that day-to-day, he held himself differently than he had that night. His friends had told him as much on many occasions: going about his daily life, he was hardly noticeable, utterly forgettable; but at a ball, under a mask, he truly became the dashing Joker.

Moreover, in his letters, Akechi had made clear that even after learning Akira’s name and history, he had no idea who Akira or the Kurusus were.

Akira smiled to himself as he dashed behind the corner of the dressmaker’s, then peeked around. An opportunity he could hardly pass up, to be a trickster again. He simply had to wait for the couple to reach the building, and…

Akira fastened on his most charming smirk, pushed his hair back a bit, took a deep breath, then rounded the corner to stand directly in front of Goro Akechi and say, “Well, if it isn’t my little royal corvid himself.”

The three promenaders stood utterly still, though while the woman and older man looked perplexed and vaguely alarmed, Akechi was simply staring at Akira, mouth slightly agape and eyes wide.

After a few long moments of still silence, the older man simply crossed his arms to glare down at Akira, while the womans seemed to recover herself enough to say, “Forgive me, but I am not certain we are the party you intended to accost. You are…”

“I should not mind so terribly if you called me the Fool,” Akira said, eyes and smirk still fastened squarely on Akechi even as Akechi’s face was settling back from shock into something stony and silent.

“Goro,” the man behind the couple said, finally coming around from behind them to face Akira from the side. “I certainly hope this is not an _acquaintance_ of yours?”

After a long pause where Akechi just looked Akira up and down, he finally met Akira’s gaze—and, with a glare, said, “No, father—this is a stranger.”

Akira could not tell if Akechi had genuinely not recognized him, and though he had his suspicions, he could not help but want to give Akechi a chance. “It’s Akira Kurusu,” he said imploringly. “Akechi, we have been corresponding for weeks.”

“Perhaps you have _Lord_ Akechi confused for someone else,” the woman suggested, stressing the title condescendingly even as she continued to smile politely. “He is an incredibly busy man, and would hardly have time for frivolous letter-writing, much less with anyone like you.

“Now, now, Goro,” the older man—Akechi’s father, Duke Shido, Akira presumed—said, staring Akira down with a cruel laugh written all across his face. “Don’t be rude. This man clearly seems to think himself ever so familiar with you. Now, why would he ever believe such a thing?”

Akechi closed his eyes briefly, before opening them to give Akira the coldest, emptiest smile.

“I recall now—you are one of the many men I danced with at Lady Ann’s ball. I truly apologize if I in any way raised your hopes for acquaintanceship or friendship or anything more with that dance. I assure you that it was utterly meaningless to me. Furthermore, I quite agree with her Ladyship’s appraisal of the situation; I receive a great deal of mail every day, and I would not waste my time corresponding with someone such as yourself.”

“Of course you would not,” Duke Shido said, addressing his son with fire in his eyes. “My son would not waste his time on such an insignificant person; if he made the mistake of doing so at a ball, he would certainly know better than repeating the mistake over and over, for months, through the writing of letters he fancied surreptitious. And he most certainly would never do so now that he is arranged to be married to Lady Kaneshiro."

Akechi was gritting his teeth now, but the way he glared, Akira could tell that the heat of his gaze was not entirely directed at his father—that part of him truly blamed Akira for putting him in this predicament, as well.

Akira, for his part, was simply dumbfounded. He recognized that Duke Shido was threatening his son, recognized that Akechi felt he had no other choice than to insult Akira and swear off ever talking to him again. Akira refused to make it that easy for Akechi; he refused to let Akechi think any of this was inevitable, when he always, always had a choice.

“Congratulations on your engagement,” Akira said bitterly. “I surely hope that marriage will not cause you to forget old acquaintances like me.”

“Let me make this clear, if my father had not done so enough already,” Akechi said, a true snarl in his voice. “We are not acquaintances. We are not anything. It would do you good to forget this confrontation ever happened, before you make me or my father truly angry.”

Akira felt he had come to know a lot about Akechi through their letter exchanges. He knew Akechi’s favorite books and favorite composers, he knew that Akechi was jealous of his ability to play the pianoforte, he knew he enjoyed bird-watching when he had free moments. He knew, even if Akechi had never said so in so many words, that Akechi hated his father, hated the idea of marrying, didn’t want any of this.

Looking at Akechi at that moment, though, was like looking at a complete stranger.

“I apologize,” Akira said. “I believe I truly must have mistaken you for someone else. The person I imagined you to be was a fundamentally good man, one whose company and correspondence I enjoyed; I apologize so deeply for ever mistaking you for him.”

Akira turned, walked away, and didn’t look back.

He didn’t care who was stopping in the street to look at him, who was talking behind their hands about the confrontation they had just witnessed. He didn’t care about anything, because all he could feel is rage, burning beneath his skin and threatening to explode—

And much of that rage was towards himself.

Because why was he disappointed? Was this truly a surprise? He knew Akechi felt trapped by his situation, but he also knew that Akechi would choose to stay trapped every time if it meant maintaining everything he had. He didn’t know what he expected, or why he thought he might ever be anything but Akechi’s little secret on paper, never in the world—

Akechi didn’t even want to acknowledge him as a friend, as an _acquaintance._ Akira wanted to smother the part of him that had hoped for anything beyond that, too.

When he had walked in silence for ten minutes, he heard brisk footsteps and, in the distance, a call of, “Kurusu.”

He did not turn around.

“Kurusu,” the voice said, much closer, and still, Akira did not turn. Still, he kept his head resolutely forward, until finally, Akechi grabbed his arm, forcing him to stop.

Before Akechi could get any words out, Akira ripped his arm out of Akechi’s grip, and gave a deep, exaggerated curtsy. “I _so_ apologize for embarrassing you, _Lord Akechi,_ ” he spat out.“Truly, I must take my leave, lest I offend you any further—”

“Kurusu, stop this. You are being horribly unfair—you know that I did not mean any of those things, that I said them simply to please my father—”

Akira laughed, a sharp, pained thing. “Oh? Because the words sounded truly intentional at the time. If you had any backbone at all, you would not be doing everything your father tells you to, only to then turn around and say you didn’t mean any of it. Akechi, you have made your choice—and it is to keep what you have at all costs, and in the pursuit of that goal someone like me means _nothing_ to you.”

“That is not true, Akira. You matter a great deal to me.”

“Is that so? It was hardly affection that I heard in those insults you so easily threw at me back there.”

Akechi scowled. “You know that I cannot simply admit to have any sort of relationship with you—not when I am to be married—”

“Ah, and this marriage—who, Lord Akechi, is the lucky lady? It must have slipped your mind to mention your engagement to me in your letters, as unimportant to you as they are.”

“She is Lady Kaneshiro, and our engagement has been set for less than two days. It was a marriage set up to secure political support, of course it was—she is obviously not someone I would choose to marry, but what choice do I have?”

“There is _always_ a choice, Lord Akechi, and you have made yours.”

“Not for me, Akira! You have absolutely no idea what it means to defy my father.”

“Right—because he might cut you off, strip you of your title? My, I cannot imagine how that would feel.”

“No, because he would—!” Akechi cut himself off, nearly panting in anger and exertion as he shouted at Akira. Suddenly, though, it seemed as if he had lost all momentum, because he simply finished, “Please, Akira. Believe that if there were any other way, I would have done it, but I could not. Please let things go back to the way they were.”

“If you marry that woman, things can never go back to the way they were.”

“ _Why,_ Akira? I have always known, as you must have known, as everyone knows to be true for someone in my position, that I must marry someone who secures advantageous alliances with my father. This is not anything new, Akira, and to have you treat it like it is something for which I am uniquely at fault, for you to treat it as if it has to mean anything for our friendship…”

As Akechi trailed off, looking at him pleadingly, Akira turned those terrible words over in his mind. Their _friendship._

Because Akechi was right, was he not? What _had_ Akira thought? What sort of relationship did he think that they had, or think that they could have? Why was the revelation of his engagement so uniquely shocking to him, so devastating?

It hardly mattered. There was more at stake here than the engagement, even if that was the point that felt like a stab into Akira’s side. The engagement, the words, all of it—all of it was Akechi showing his true colors, flying them for the world to see, only to try to take them back in private.

“Lord Akechi,” Akira said, steely and composed. “If you are not willing to your father right now and take back everything you said—if you are not willing to exit this marriage that you clearly have no love for—if you are not willing to make a single choice to take control of your goddamn life for fear of making a single sacrifice—then I never want to hear from you again.”

Akechi looked at him, truly broken, before finally, softly, saying, “I cannot, Akira.”

Akira reached into his coat pocket, pulled out Akechi’s glove, and threw it on the ground in front of him. Then he turned and ran away, as fast as he could.

Akechi did not pursue him.

Once he had run far enough away that he knew Akechi was not following him, he suddenly collapsed under a tree, hot, angry tears clouding his vision.

Akira hated Akechi. He _hated_ him. Akechi, and all those like him, was everything wrong with the world—all the selfishness, all the bitterness, all the vile pride of humanity, bundled up into one utterly despicable man. Akira wanted to feel proud of himself for challenging such a horrific, disgusting force; he wanted to feel relieved when he cut that force out of his life forever.

He did not.

  


* * *

  


Over the next few days, Akira constantly found himself reaching for the glove in his pocket to calm himself by rubbing his thumb over the embroidery over silk, only to find his jacket pockets utterly bare. 

Thinking of Akechi filled him with rage, so he tried not to. Akechi sent a letter, then a second, then a third, and Akira refused every one of them, returning the letters straight to their sender.

Every time he saw a new letter arrive from Akechi, he felt sick to his stomach, disgusted. And an undeniable portion of the utter disgust he felt constantly was towards himself.

Because how had he deluded himself for so long? How had he ever thought that he might lure Akechi out of his selfish and utterly self-preserving views, with just a few dances and pretty words in a letter? He was truly a Fool.

The foolishness and disgust he felt only grew worse when he thought about what, exactly, had been the precipitating factor for their realization.

Marriage. Akechi’s marriage. Why, only when he saw that Akechi was to be married to someone he absolutely did not love, were all of his flaws suddenly unbearable to Akira? Akira had excused Akechi mocking his friends of lower classes, had excused his repugnant views of his own superiority—but suddenly, seeing that he was engaged to be married was the thing that made his personality flaws unbearable.

Thinking too hard about why that was so made Akira’s stomach clench and his heart ache.

Night after night, he tortured himself. He would take out Akechi’s letters out onto his balcony and read by the moonlight, read and reread until he knew each letter intimately. Or, perhaps, he would take out one of the books they had discussed in those letters, one that Akira knew he would never again be able to read without thinking of Akechi and Akechi only.

_His letters…_

They filled him with longing, and with anger. He wondered, did he truly know anything about Akechi? He had felt as if he did—when they exchanged letters, Akira felt as if he was back in the Okumuras’ ballroom, hearing the man in the black mask share the worst of himself without shame and watching the man in the red mask charm him, both at the same time. Both were masks; neither was real, neither was fake. Yet somehow, Akira felt that, on the page, as they wrote letter after letter, he had somehow reached the person behind the masks, the person who was both of them.

Inevitably, though, Akira’s mind would then turn to Akechi’s words in town. Those had been the truth, too—a truth perhaps exaggerated for his father’s sake, but a truth nevertheless. Goro Akechi amused himself with Akira’s letters, but would never admit to a public acquaintance with him, much less anything more.

Akechi sent a third letter, and a fourth, and a fifth, and it took everything in Akira’s power to refuse them.

He was the one who asked for this. He was the one who told Akechi never to write him a letter again. Yet night after night he found himself dreaming, hoping, that perhaps if they had exchanged just one more letter, perhaps if he had tried just a little harder in town to convince Akechi, perhaps then things would be different—

They would not, Akira knew with certainty. Akechi was to be married to the woman his father picked, and would be moving far away to live with her. It might have been Shido’s will, but it was Akechi’s choice, and he had made it.

Akira’s mind kept going in this loop of thoughts, always ending with him wondering, again and again, how he could have become so deeply invested in Akechi in the scant few months they have been talking, how this could feel so strongly like a betrayal—

He was laying in bed one night, staring up at the ceiling and utterly unable to fall asleep, when he heard something strange from outside his window.

It was a scratching noise against the walls below him, sounding like claws quietly raking against the stones. _A large animal?_

Akira hastily unlatched his door, stepped out into the chilly night air, looked over the railing of his balcony, and found Goro Akechi using a makeshift grappling hook to swiftly scale the wall up to Akira’s balcony.

Akira was utterly unsure how to react. He was stunned.

All he knew is that when Akechi finally reached the balcony level, Akira extended a hand to help hoist Akechi over the railing, onto Akira’s balcony and back into his life.

Back on solid ground, Akechi gave a nod of thanks, catching his breath and brushing the dirt off himself. It hardly helped his appearance—for Akechi looked dreadful, as if it had been days since he slept properly, and as if he had given hardly a second thought to his clothing when he headed over here.

Several long moments of silence passed, with Akira still entirely unsure what to say, until he finally settled on, “I have told Ryuji of our last altercation, you know. He despises you tremendously now. If he woke up and saw you on our grounds, he probably would have run over with a hatchet and murdered you on sight.”

Akechi gave a small laugh, tired but genuine, before saying, “Yes, and he would have been thoroughly justified in doing so—one of the many reasons moving clandestinely was necessary. I hope you will forgive such a violent manner of intrusion, but even if you cannot, I assure you it will be for but a moment before I remove myself from your life forever.”

Akira could not quite place how he was feeling. Anger, yes—his anger at Akechi’s words in town was still sharp—but more overwhelming was the sheer relief of simply seeing Akechi again. He had thought that he wanted Akechi to leave his life forever—he had truly thought so—but he realized just how wrong that was the second he saw Akechi again and felt as if the weight that had been crushing him all this time was finally, blissfully lifted.

He also had questions.

“And the other reasons you need to move clandestinely?”

“My father,” Akechi said simply. “I am leaving—escaping, rather. I must make haste before my father realizes my absence and sends scouts after me, so every minute of distance I can cross before he notices my absence is crucial. But even more crucial to me was seeing you one last time before I left.”

Akechi looked to the ground for a moment, collecting himself, and then stared straight at Akira. His eyes were fierce—the very eyes that had simmered darkly behind a black mask and had shined jovially behind a red one, now out in the open for Akira to see, blazing bright. Those eyes held Akira’s gaze steadily.

“I have done terrible things, Kurusu. Many, many terrible things that cannot, and should not, be forgiven, all in the name of being the man my father wished me to be. And what I have done to you—though it may be one of the more bloodless of my crimes, Kurusu, believe me when I say that it is among those which I regret the most.

“Your plainly expressed desire to never see or hear from me again is an overwhelmingly reasonable one, and violating that wish right now is only one more item on the list of my many, many transgressions against you. But no matter how monstrous I am to you, I needed to see you before leaving this life of mine forever.”

Akira’s panic must have shown clearly on his face, because Akechi startled upon seeing the look on Akira’s face, before saying, “No, no—I fully intend to live. Death would be too easy an escape for someone like me, Akira. I intend to live, and I intend to do whatever it takes to make up for what I have done. My crimes can never be forgiven, but I can spend the rest of my life atoning as best I can.”

“What crimes, Akechi? What are you saying?”

Akechi simply shook his head, saying, “Even now, I cannot bear to see you when I tell you the long, long list of my sins. Suffice it to say that if you knew of each and every one, you would hate me even more than you do now, Kurusu—and I am a coward, because even knowing I do not deserve it, I came to see you.”

Finally—for the first time in minutes, for the first time in his long, passioned speech, Akechi drops his gaze. “I came to see you,” he says again, his voice much quieter, almost mumbled. “Kurusu—Akira—it is you who gave me the will to change. It is you who showed me that it is possible, and it is for you that I want to become a better person. For that, I thank you.”

There was so much still that Akira did not understand about what was happening—but he sensed that he was running out of time, so he pushed through what he did not understand towards that which he could. “Akechi,” he said, “if you wish to become a better person—if you wish to atone for whatever it is—then I can help you. I want to help you. You don’t need to leave, you can—”

“I must,” Akechi said, quietly but firmly, with a small shake of his head. “I must leave, and the only thing that remained to do of this old life was to see you—to apologize without any expectation of forgiveness, to thank you, and...to see you, Akira, one last time before leaving forever.”

“Not forever, Akechi, you—” Akira’s panic rose. “What are you planning, what are you—”

He stopped speaking when he saw Akechi pull off his glove. The glove—the same glove that Akechi had lost so many months ago, the glove that Akira kept in his pocket as a hopeful promise, the one he threw back in Akechi’s face. Slowly, Akechi pulled it off of his own hand, and pressed it into Akira’s outstretched one.

The moment the skin of their bare hands touched around the glove, everything went quiet. The chill of the night air was replaced with a burning heat radiating from the touch.

Akechi’s hand was softer than the leather of the glove, gentle.

The feeling of that hand atop his, the places where his fingertips touched around the glove, were suddenly the only things Akira could feel in the world. He was holding his breath, all thoughts ceased, for all he knew in that moment was that he needed to keep hold in this hand in his, that he could never let go, that his hand was his lifeline, his safety, his everything—

Akechi turned their hands gently, and then, with the softest touch of his lips, bent to press a kiss to the back of Akira’s hand.

His skin felt on fire where Akechi’s lips had touched, and the fire spread when Akechi tenderly ran his thumb over the soft underside of Akira’s wrist.

Akira could hardly find air to breathe even as he knew he had let out a small gasp the moment Akechi’s lips touched his knuckles. He could not breathe, and he wanted to stay in that suffocating moment forever.

But the moment ended. Akechi ended it—softly, sadly, yet with certainty, Akechi withdrew his hand, pressing the glove safely into Akira’s palm. The withdrawal was slow, his hand pulling back over the entire length of Akira’s, until his fingertips lingered for just a moment against the tips of Akira’s own. Then, finally, he pulled back his hand completely, and there was nothing but the ghost of his touch left, burning on Akira’s skin.

“Hold onto that for me, Akira,” Akechi said, and Akira gripped the glove tightly. “Despise me if you will, for I deserve it...but hold onto that for me, and perhaps one day…”

Akechi trailed off, and from the look in his eyes, he was certain that day—the day when he might be able to return, the day when he might be a good enough man to deserve to return—was a day that would never come.

Before Akira could say anything else, Akechi had smoothly swung himself over the balcony railing, lowered himself to the ground with the grappling hook, mounted his horse, and took off into the night. 

Akira watched as Akechi disappeared into the woods, never once looking back.

  
  


The air had returned to stillness, the night recovered its usual chill, and the moon shined just as it had before—but Akechi was gone, perhaps forever, and that left everything feeling irrevocably changed.

Akira was still holding the glove, just as Akechi had left it in his hand. He grasped it slightly harder—and realized that the palm was slightly stiffer than it should have been.

Akira reached into the glove, shivering when he realized that it was still warm from Akechi’s hand. As he felt around the familiar silken lining and embroidery, he found something foreign, and pulled it out.

It was two sheets of paper, folded over and over until they lay practically flat against the palm of the glove, hardly detectable.

Akira glanced up at the horizon once more, seeing that Akechi was well and truly gone. Then he unfolded the letter, and began to read.

_Dear Akira,_

_I pray that, by the time you are reading this, I will be gone, and I will have apologized to you. No amount of apologies, whether in words or in writing, will ever convey the complexity of what I feel, but you are owed them nevertheless._

_I also understand if you would rather burn this letter immediately upon receiving it. I give you permission to stop reading here and do so—but if you do not, then know that what I am about to share is not an attempt to garner pity, or to make my apology more worthwhile. Nothing of the sort. Rather, I am writing because I know that you, Akira Kurusu, are a fundamentally good person, and that as a good person, no matter how much I have harmed you, you might try to help me once you find out what I am running from. This letter contains everything I was too afraid to tell you in person, too cowardly to._

_My father, Duke Shido, abandoned my mother before I was even born. My entire life, I have lived in fear, because I was an unwanted child—until my mother took her own life, leaving me truly with nothing. I was seven years old, and already settled in an orphanage, when some of Duke Shido’s men came to me with what they called a choice, but which was really nothing of the sort: come with them to live as Duke Shido’s son and rightful heir, or live with nothing, for the rest of my life._

_I accepted, of course—my whole life, I had longed for nothing more than my father’s acceptance—but he made clear, then and every moment since, that my position was conditional. If I made one wrong step, or made one mistake, he would leave me with nothing, or with worse than nothing. Nothing, to me, was living with a mother who had to prostitute herself just to feed me, was living cold and hungry every day, and losing even that when she left this world. The prospect of going back to that, after knowing the life Shido provided me, was unfathomable._

_What following his orders meant changed as I grew older, however. At first, it was as any Duke’s son would experience—maintaining utmost propriety, representing the family well at social events, learning my place at the top of the world._

_Later, it turned to action, horrible action. I will not detail exactly what he had me do, for even now, when I am abandoning it all and confessing everything to you, I wish, foolishly, to preserve even a little any respect you might have had for me. Suffice to say that I carried out illegal deeds for Shido, ruined peoples’ lives, and made many, many people suffer. I did not think twice about any of it. Other people, especially others lower than me, were inconsequential in the face of maintaining our status and our legacy._

_And then I met you, Akira, a man who had already lost everything and who had found something even better at the end, who was not afraid to flout what he saw as meaningless traditions or expectations if he was able to find greater happiness in it. In truth, I hated you for this—you were no one and nothing, and there you were, chastising me for accepting things you could not understand. Yet of course it was I who was the fool, accepting things that I never needed to accept with the false belief that nothing could change._

_Seeing you in town the other day made me realize that, Akira. What my heart wanted when I saw you was to mock you for your little prank, to continue the conversation we were having in our letters now in person, to take you for a walk and get to know you more than I had. What I did was insult you, tell you that you were worth nothing, because that is what my father wanted me to do. I made the choice to preserve what I had, and for the first time in my life, Akira, I felt I had made the wrong choice._

_I do not make wrong choices. I thought, for a long time, about whether you were wrong or my entire life was wrong, and agonizing as it was, Akira, I realized it was my life that needed to change._

_As soon as I realized that, I could not stand to live my false life any longer than I had. I started by telling my father that I would not marry the woman he had chosen for me—a small place to start, in the face of everything he had ever had me do, and yet, when I thought of you and your eyes, it felt an important one to start with. I felt that I could negotiate with my father._

_I failed, of course. He struck me, and told me that if I ever challenged a decision of his again, he would have me killed and make it look like an accident. Perhaps that sounds dramatic to you, Akira, but knowing what I know about the man, I know it is not an empty threat._

_So I am running away, doing exactly what it is you have been telling me to do all this time—throwing out everything. I am losing everything, and it feels right, Akira, that I should do so—losing even you._

_I know that my father knows I have been in correspondence with you; he likely suspects that you have had some influence on my behavior and my choices. He insinuated as much when I told him my choice, asking if I would rather marry “some criminal trash you found at a ball, ever a whore just like your mother.”_

_I need to make it clear that you have nothing to do with this, Akira, or else you will be in danger from Shido. You need to stay exactly as you are, while I do what I must to make myself disappear on my own terms._

_Thank you, Akira, for helping me to be free._

_I will not soon forgive myself for how I insulted you, but now that I have given myself the opportunity—the necessity—to escape and become better, I see it as a change to improve myself. To be perfectly honest, even if the threat of Shido did not loom over me, I feel that I might have, upon having the same realization, left you anyway. This would be the only fair thing, because I need to find a way to live without everything that I have always had, and doing so will not be pretty, because underneath it all I am not a pretty person._

_But I will always have the hope that losing everything is not so bad, because you taught me that would be better than living my life rich and comfortable and forever dreaming of grey eyes behind a black and white mask, and clever letters in a beautiful hand, forever remembering the man I hurt so badly in my pride._

_Still, I am a fundamentally selfish person, and though I can hardly forgive myself for my crimes, I cannot help but want to start over. And though I am leaving here forever, know that I will always, always, be thinking of you as I do._

_You are an incredible person, Akira, and the depth of feeling I have found myself feeling for you is indescribable. To put it plainly: I love you, and for that reason, I must say goodbye._

_Love,_

_Akechi Goro_

By the time he finished the letter, Akira realized his hand was shaking. He had to let the letter drop to the table to prevent himself from tearing it to pieces; and in his other hand, he gripped the glove, gripped it impossibly tight.

Akechi was selfish—so, so selfish. Akira had long known that, but the depth of his selfishness overwhelmed Akira. He was selfish to assume that this is what Akira would have wanted—that after confessing to all his crimes and sins, Akechi’s disappearance is what Akira would want most. He was selfish to assume that, if Akira was in any way in danger from Shido’s influence, he would want Akechi to protect him by leaving.

Akechi clearly did not know Akira at all. He reread Akechi’s letter, and felt angry tears forming in his eyes at how fundamentally true that fact was—Akechi did not know him at all, because this was not what he wanted, not at all.

Somewhere deep inside of him, something burst into flames. It started in his heart, threatening to burn the letter just as Akechi had given him permission to, and then threatening to burn his house, the countryside, the entire country, everything.

Akechi had left because Shido was a danger to both of them. He left in hopes of atoning and becoming a better man, too—Akira could not deny that he had little control over that part—but. If Akira could harness that fire suddenly alight within him to remove the threat Shido posed—no matter how much it took—then perhaps, perhaps, Akechi could come back to him. Perhaps, perhaps, Akechi could be his.

  


* * *

  


Akira removed the threat. And Akechi, still, did not come back to him.

Using the hints in Akechi’s letter, Akira looked into Shido’s crimes—and found many, many crimes. It cost Akira—of course it cost Akira—but he knew there was a price for everything that mattered. His dignity and good name mattered so little to him, he hardly cared when they were dragged through the mud in Shido’s angry defense, with false evidence planted against him. He hardly cared, too, when his dignity and good name were restored once more, truth come to light.

None of it mattered—all that mattered was Akechi coming back, but it had been a full year, and he had not.

Before all of this, he had known that losing everything he had was survivable—he had said so to Akechi, many times—but that hardly meant he courted disaster, either. He kept his head down, kept out of the spotlight, his highest form of rebellion being stealing dances dressed as a thief at a ball.

Now, he had some true theft under his belt. Documents and letters had gone missing—all too conveniently, if anyone had looked into it, but they had not. None of it mattered. He would have been arrested a hundred times over to take Shido down. And still it did not bring Akechi back.

Two years passed. Lady Ann had gone back overseas and come back home. Another homecoming ball was in order. Another masquerade, she insisted.

Akira was not looking forward to it. Things had settled down in the year since taking down Shido. During Shido’s trial, Akira had found himself thinking about Akechi constantly, full of righteous fury hearing about all the crimes Shido had made him commit, all the myriad was Shido had messed him up. Now though, he thinks of Akechi only with melancholy. Because things were safe again, things had been safe for a while, and Akechi had not returned.

He put little effort into the ball, reusing his gentleman thief costume from two years prior. What was the point? He had no desire to dance with anyone.

It was a bitterly funny reminiscence, to think back on how, just two years prior, he had mocked Akechi for sitting on the sidelines in silence; now, it seemed a fantastic idea to Akira. He attended the ball because Ann wished for him to, and to please Haru; he would make his appearances as necessary, spend the minimum time needed there, then leave.

He sat, alone, in one of the Okumuras’ plush chairs on the sidelines of a ball. The music was hardly rousing; it only filled him with memories of dancing with Akechi, talking with Akechi, falling in love with Akechi. His old costume cloaked him like a dreadful memory, feeling all too much like those dreams he had night after night where he reached out to a man in a mask—sometimes a red one, sometimes black—and could never quite catch him.

And so he felt he must have been dreaming, perhaps, when a bare hand extended towards him.

A bare hand—but the other hand, held at the man’s side, was not bare. No, it wore a glove identical to the one that Akira still carried in his pocket, after all this time.

Familiar eyes shone behind a black mask as a voice he had dreamed about asked if he could finally receive his glove back, in exchange for the next dance.

**Author's Note:**

> > Elizabeth's spirits soon rising to playfulness again, she wanted Mr. Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love with her. "How could you begin?" said she. "I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when you had once made a beginning; but what could set you off in the first place?"
>> 
>> "I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I _had_ begun"
> 
> _"Pride and Prejudice," Jane Austen_
> 
> [art by yua!](https://twitter.com/YuaXIII/status/1302390144469807106?s=20)


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